Sainsbury's website crashes leaving thousands of without groceries

Thousands of Sainsbury's shoppers have been left without their groceries, after the supermarket's website froze.

By Harry Wallop, Consumer Affairs Correspondent

3:41PM BST 18 Jun 2008

The website has been out of action since late on Tuesday and the supermarket has now been forced to suspend the whole operation until it sorts out the problem.

The online grocery business is hugely popular, and attracts 90,000 customers a week.

A spokesman said customers waiting for their deliveries on Wednesday will be affected, with an estimated 10,000 or fewer hit by the chaos. They will need to arrange an alternative time for their food to be delivered.

As compensation for the inconvenience, they will be given a £10 voucher to spend on the wesbsite. Anyone whose shopping failed to arrive will not be charged, the supermarket said.

Those trying to book their weekly shop are greeted with the following message: "We're sorry...We have temporarily frozen our online home delivery website having identified a technical issue.

"We are contacting customers directly whose deliveries have been affected. We apologise for any inconvenience this causes you."

The company can not give a date for when the technical issues will be solved and the website will back up and running.

It is thought that the problems meant that though people could order their food, their addresses were not registering on the system.

Sainsbury's stressed there was no suggestion that people's personal details were at risk and that they were confident a hacker was not responsible for the system crashing.

The problem comes at a particularly embarrassing time for the company – on the same day that it unveiled a disappointing set of trading figures, which would have been worse was it not for an impressive performance from its online operation.

Online sales increased 40 per cent in the 12 weeks to June 14th.

Total like-for-like sales hit 3.4 per cent – lower than City analysts were expecting.

Justin King, chief executive of Sainsbury, said: "The challenging economic environment continued throughout the quarter.

"However, we are now serving nearly 18 million customers a week and have delivered sales growth in line with our expectations."